Ghostcrawler Says Forum Critics are Wrong

[Wuzeh-wyrmrest-accord]

See how important you’re making yourself out to be? You’re “invested” in the game. I bet you think you’re “passionate.”

The heck do you mean I ‘think’ I’m passionate? I AM passionate about the game. The fact you have to downplay everything that disagrees with your opinion is adorable. I challenge you to find people more passionate about this game than the people criticizing it.

Secondly, making myself important? Where the hell did that come from? I didn’t know making a post littered with cynicism and sarcasm constituted as self-importance.

That’s the other funny thing about the people who blindly defend this game, they really have to reach to justify this idea that the critics are EEEEVIL. Don’t look at things objectively, just strawman the opposition for daring to criticize the game.

I couldn’t have asked for a better illustration though, so thanks for this half-baked reply.

Edit: Hell, you’re a shaman. You should atleast be mad about what they did to you.

[Kheradin-aerie-peak (Kheradin)]

Ghostcrawler also said this:

“As an aside, the best way to drive change is still to try and clearly articulate your concerns in some public forum and hope that the developers take it seriously. I have talked to plenty of players to know how frustrating that answer might be, because at the end of the day, there just isn’t some kind of magic key that you can use to 100% guarantee that you will unlock that lock. Nevertheless, it’s still the best hope you have.”

[Mvura-area-52 (Mvura)]

The heck do you mean I ‘think’ I’m passionate? I AM passionate about the game. The fact you have to downplay everything that disagrees with your opinion is adorable. I challenge you to find people more passionate about this game than the people criticizing it.

Yeah, we’re all passionate about it. That’s why we hang out on video game forums all day. You’re not special because you like the game a lot.

Secondly, making myself important? Where the hell did that come from? I didn’t know making a post littered with cynicism and sarcasm constituted as self-importance.

You made it clear that you investment and passion precludes you from someone challenging your point of view. I’m saying that you’re not uniquely invested, you just think it makes your point of view more valid than say, mine.

That’s the other funny thing about the people who blindly defend this game, they really have to reach to justify this idea that the critics are EEEEVIL . Don’t look at things objectively, just strawman the opposition for daring to criticize the game.

I never called you evil, bud. Posturing, yes. Evil? No. But I’ve seen plenty of “passionate” “invested” players project all kinds of malicious intent on the developers. Maybe it’s that behavior they getting called on and not their critique of the game.

[Wuzeh-wyrmrest-accord]

Yeah, we’re all passionate about it. That’s why we hang out on video game forums all day. You’re not special because you like the game a lot.

Never said I was special because of it. I point it out, because the people who criticize the game love it and want it to be better.

You made it clear that you investment and passion precludes you from someone challenging your point of view.

No I didn’t. Don’t know how you got that read.

I never called you evil, bud. Posturing, yes. Evil? No. But I’ve seen plenty of “passionate” “invested” players project all kinds of malicious intent on the developers. Maybe it’s that behavior they getting called on and not their critique of the game.

1: No, but many of this game’s defenders just want you to shut up and never criticise a damn thing.

2: I and many other people with the same opinions on the game have never, nor will ever escalate our grievances to personal attacks/threats and such to the developers IRL. The fact you’re lumping me in with the same ilk based on the fact I’m dissatisfied with the state of the game is frankly, disgusting.

[Vera-silver-hand (Vera)]

Only issue that I’ve had with GC was heroic dungeons in cata until they got fixed. At least when he was around, he didn’t try to take flying away from the playerbase.

[Ythisens]

This is actually cringeworthy to read. You are comparing the Legion legendary system to BFA as a whole? In fact it’s only half of the legendary system because mostly everyone liked Legendaries, they just didn’t like how you acquired them.

I’m not trying to specifically compare but rather use it as an example for an individual feature. I should’ve probably worded it better to convey that in all honesty.

[Seradi-norgannon (Seradi)]

Even though MoP gave me heartburn at first, it was a good expansion. Not one single era of WoW had as much content as MoP.

Legion sure did. We paying for that now.

[Tovi-moon-guard (Tovi)]

No it didn’t. The amount of content introduced in MoP was massive.

[Sars-blackhand (Sars)]

And the same 15 people always seem to need to feel better by implying “every one that are subscribed , but not posting on the forums, are enjoying the game. Thus, the game is fine and criticisms shouldn’t be taken seriously”

Right…

[Tinúviel-aerie-peak (Tinúviel)]

You sure love misrepresenting and twisting what I said don’t you friendo?

[Blitzkareeg-area-52 (Blitzkareeg)]

This is actually cringeworthy to read. You are comparing the Legion legendary system to BFA as a whole? In fact it’s only half of the legendary system because mostly everyone liked Legendaries, they just didn’t like how you acquired them.

Alls we got in this expansion is Tier bonuses taken, Legendary traits taken, and the whole other talent type system PER SPEC within the Artifacts, and we got in their place, the WORST PART OF LEGION as a mainstay, that stupid relic RNG SLOT MACHINE from Argus!

Its a crying shame.

[Varrow-sargeras (Varrow)]

There can be great valid, and negative, feedback on the forums. But there is also no lack of hyperbole.

Honestly, I just find it the most frustrating that hard hitting issues seem to often go ignored. I understand that it’s difficult to communicate on big issues like class design, balance, gcd changes, azerite balance, reward systems, RNG. But there should be reasons to communicate.

It seems like they have become afraid to say anything because of how the community will always throw the words back in their face if they change their mind or don’t deliver. I think a lot of that comes from never getting reasons.

They announced they were going to make a gcd change to offensive abilities. Then added WAYYYYY more than offensive abilities to the GCD. They never mentioned the topic again lol.

They make posts about class design, they made a huge blog post in early beta, they say “more extensive reworks are coming” for some classes. Then some of it never comes, or they don’t address any feedback on the changes they do make.

They implement a currency system, but don’t respond to any of the feedback on the pacing.

They say they are changing islands, but aside from event variety don’t really say how they are changing them. It’s not just the rewards, it’s also the gameplay.

We need reasonings for things. Other games give it. Any new HotS class and balance changes have videos, lots of dev notes. You see discussions for Overwatch changes and balance. Games by other developers get extensive patch notes/reasonings at times. I do not understand why the WoW team is so bad at it, and it leaves the players with no choice but to make up their own reasonings for why things are bad. And yeah people will latch onto something that maybe makes some kind of sense, or whatever they agree with.

Because there is nothing from Blizzard for them to latch onto, there’s no interaction in a vast majority of cases. It’s Blizzard popping in every now and then with “this is what we’re doing, we appreciate feedback” and then they never say anything again lol.

[Noleafclover-skullcrusher (Noleafclover)]

There was a thread awhile back that had snapshots through WoW’s history of the forums showing that GD has never really changed no matter what expansion. Even Wrath, BC, and Vanilla had large amounts of complaint posts.

Not diminishing any of the current ones on BfA or saying they’re wrong, but just that a lot of people don’t remember those past expansions and only focus on the current and assume the sky is falling. When the majority either likes it or is indifferent to it like Greg is saying in that tweet.

People are fondly remembering Legion now, but forget the outrage that followed Legendaries from 7.0 to 7.2. There were multiple threads a day with hundreds of replies with feedback about them.

The forums are a good gauge of activity but not necessarily the “state of the game”. That’s a little more complicated.

I’m changing this post as I felt it was very rude and I apologize. I do appreciate that there has been a little more communication lately.

The biggest problem I have, the beta and alpha just made it feel like we were not being listened to at all.

And then when the game came out and the exact problems we said would occur, occurred it just became very disheartening.

I do understand that making games are not the easiest thing to do.

My main complaints this expansion:

I don’t feel like a paladin anymore, I feel like a random plate wearer. I absolutely hate that when I get gear from raids or anywhere, I know longer feel like a paladin just a dumb plate wearer.

[Metrohaha-firetree (Metrohaha)]

I’m so glad you posted this

People are fondly remembering Legion now, but forget the outrage that followed Legendaries from 7.0 to 7.2. There were multiple threads a day with hundreds of replies with feedback about them.

People seriously seem to have forgotten how absurd of an outrage the top players learning of the 4 legendary BLP cap was, and how THEY DISCOVERED IT, essentially acting like Blizzard was lying and covering it up.

This was an existential crisis for the game’s competitive players and with out question in my mind the biggest thing that ever made me concerned with the long term health of the game.

Now everyone’s talking about Legion like they only played 7.3 and onwards.

That makes it really hard to have a discussion, I feel like, because people are comparing a version of a game to a memory instead of making an objective comparison.

[Seradi-norgannon (Seradi)]

No it didn’t. The amount of content introduced in MoP was massive.

Artifact questlines, Class Hall Campaigns, Suramar, the Illidan questline, Balance of Power, Pillars of Creation, Class mounts, WQs, Mage Tower, M+, Raids, Broken Shore, and Argus.

Suramar was IoT, Broken Shore was TI, Argus was Krasarang, M+ is a better (and repeatable) version of CMs, MoP had an extra raid to start, WQs are just dailies but they were relevant the entire expansion because of Paragon caches and legendary farming, Balance of Power/Artifact progression was basically the Legendary cloak questline, Mage Tower was an improved version of Proving Grounds with rewards that were unique to 36 classes instead of 3 roles, and MoP had the farm and that’s about equal to the mission table.

They had pretty much the same amount of content. A lot of Legion was class/spec unique and repeatable though.

[Milkshooter-twisting-nether (Milkshooter)]

That makes it really hard to have a discussion, I feel like, because people are comparing a version of a game to a memory instead of making an objective comparison.

It was a bad system then and its an even worse system now. You want an honest conversation about it that is fine by me.

The legendary system was terrible. It was an RNG system that several classes were tied to. I won’t even get into the bug that allowed lucky people to get all of them before some people found one.

The Azerite system is even worse.

I say this as someone who is well aware of the issues of the legendary system they implemented at the start of legion.

[Varrow-sargeras (Varrow)]

Now everyone’s talking about Legion like they only played 7.3 and onwards.

As awful as the Legendary system was, most everything else about Legion was pretty dang good. AP had some questionable moments early on too, but Legion was a good expansion.

There was the singular aspect of legendary acquisition that was absolutely horrid, but it was still only one part in a very large game. And yeah, once you had most (or all) of them they were a fun aspect of the game.

Even nothing in BfA was as poorly implemented as the legendary acquisition system in my opinion though.

[Blitzkareeg-area-52 (Blitzkareeg)]

We need reasonings for things. Other games give it. Any new HotS class and balance changes have videos, lots of dev notes. You see discussions for Overwatch changes and balance. Games by other developers get extensive patch notes/reasonings at times. I do not understand why the WoW team is so bad at it, and it leaves the players with no choice but to make up their own reasonings for why things are bad. And yeah people will latch onto something that maybe makes some kind of sense, or whatever they agree with.

Because there is nothing from Blizzard for them to latch onto, there’s no interaction in a vast majority of cases. It’s Blizzard popping in every now and then with “this is what we’re doing, we appreciate feedback” and then they never say anything again lol.

Preach on my friend! So true!

[anon44207803]

People are fondly remembering Legion now, but forget the outrage that followed Legendaries from 7.0 to 7.2. There were multiple threads a day with hundreds of replies with feedback about them.

Thats a selective comment, Ythisens.

None of them were about legendaries, but about the way they were obtained.

The issue with the way that the system allowed those to have one get two…then three, then four…when the rest of us had NONE comes to mind. The items themselves were fine, the godawful RNG that meant that many of us had zero for months comes to mind.

The forums are a good gauge of activity but not necessarily the “state of the game”. That’s a little more complicated.

Maybe so, what wasnt so complicated is that the essences fix had been asked for over a long time, and was not implemented until much later.

[Ythisens]

None of them were about legendaries,

You forget about the massive re-balance we did for them in 7.1 then where we redid/buffed all of the under-performing legendaries because of how punishing it was to get some of them.

Like I said earlier in the thread it wasn’t a direct comparison but an example.